Icons: The Schott Perfecto
Photography: Chloe Mallett
Words by Delwyn Mallett
In our twentieth visit to the vaults of sartorial icons, we learn about the biker jacket that launched a million imitations!
Before 1954 the Schott Perfecto leather motorcycle jacket was simply that – a utilitarian heavy leather biker’s jacket. And then Johnny Strabler, ‘The Wild One’, roared into town on his Triumph Thunderbird, at the head of the ‘Black Rebels Motor Club’ and overnight the Perfecto became a symbol for a nation’s rebellious and disaffected youth.
In 1913 Irving and Jack Schott, sons of Russian immigrants, founded Schott Bros. in the basement of a tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, hand-making sheepskin-lined raincoats, which were then sold door-to-door. Within two years the brothers moved to larger premises in Staten Island and expanded their range into leather jackets. With new premises and new products Irving also introduced a new name for his top-of-the-range jackets – Perfecto – after his favourite brand of Cuban cigars.
Schott were the first manufacturer to offer a zip-up jacket and in 1928 they launched what would become their most famous design, destined to become an icon for generations of aspiring rebels – with or without a cause, or a bike. Schott’s first Perfecto biker’s jacket was made for sale through a Long Island Harley Davidson dealer – and cost $5.50.
Made from heavy horsehide, the jacket featured an angled zipped overlapping front for extra wind and weather protection, a large zipped D-pocket on the left side, with a smaller, flapped and press-studded pocket superimposed. The sleeves were zipped at the wrist, the shoulders carried studded epaulets and the jacket was tightened at the waist with a buckled half belt. By the time Johnny Strabler got his Perfecto ‘613’ substantially more pockets and zips had accumulated. The ‘D’ pocket had given way to two angled and zipped side pockets and a zipped diagonal breast pocket. The small flapped ‘change’ pocket remained but was now let into the body. Perhaps as a carryover from Schott’s wartime production of military flying jackets, each epaulet sported a chromed ‘General’s’ star. After a few years the 613, or ‘One Star’ was replaced by the identical but starless 618 – it seems that light-fingered shoppers were making off with the stars to stick on their cheaper jackets. Horsehide was phased out and replaced by steerhide or cowhide in the 1960s, although it is now back on the menu for those who want it.
Released in December 1953 ‘The Wild One’ starred 29-year-old Marlon Brando, the hottest actor in Hollywood in only his fifth movie but already three times Oscar-nominated. The story was loosely based on an incident that took place in 1947 when the small California town of Hollister burst at the seams as over 4000 motorcyclists arrived to take part in an officially sanctioned motorcycle rally they were hosting. Sensationalised by the press as an unruly drunken rampage the movie was even more provocative, so much so that it was banned in Britain until 1968. A move that didn’t stop our homegrown bikers, known as ‘Rockers’, from adopting the leather jacket, although it’s unlikely that our impoverished youths could actually afford or even access the real thing.
Brando, surprisingly chubby of cheek and Levi-clad thigh, broods and mumbles his way through the film and when asked by a local girl ‘What are you rebelling against, Johnny?’ memorably replies, ‘Whaddya got?’ A response that could be the credo of every angst-ridden teenager to this day.
For a time, sales of the Perfecto actually dipped when many US schools banned the ‘hoodlum’ jackets on campus but, like all prohibition, it only succeeded in making the jacket more desirable.
An early adopter of ‘the look’ was another screen legend, James Dean. Although he didn’t wear a Perfecto on screen the ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ was much-photographed racing his Triumph around LA wearing his Perfecto – complete with optional detachable fur collar – and of course he had the advantage of dying young, a prerequisite for all true legends.
A new youth phenomenon arrived in the 1960s emanating out of Liverpool. The Beatles on returning from Hamburg abandoned their leather-clad ‘Rocker’ wardrobe and went ‘smart’, becoming global role models in Pierre Cardin-inspired collarless suits. Close on the Beatle’s Cuban heels came the tie-dyed multi-coloured rainbow-hued ‘Summer of Love’ and the ‘Biker Look’ was most definitely sidelined. But come the 1970s and 1980s anti-establishment Punk bands like the Ramones, Blondie and the Sex Pistols took to the biker jacket on and off stage and the Schott Perfecto was back. Over the ensuing decades the Perfecto, and its countless imitations, has become the de rigueur uniform not just for bikers but for hard-core rock’n’ rollers.
After more than a century Schott NYC is still a family-owned business, with the fourth generation at the helm and, unusually, still manufacture their Perfecto jackets in the US at their New Jersey factory. They now cost a little more than that original $5.50, but then legends don’t come cheap.
